DMN Columnist James Ragland discusses poverty, Central Dallas Ministries

Thanks to columnist James Ragland of The Dallas Morning News for including Larry James, President & CEO of Central Dallas Ministries, in the story below:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/jragland/stories/DN-ragland_13met.ART.State.Edition1.4dacf76.html

There's an endless supply of poverty.

Even in a nation as prosperous as ours.

Which means that if I ever get around to inking Poor Like Me – the unwritten story of a poor farm boy from East Texas who grew up to be a poor journalist in North Texas – a vast, if restless, audience awaits.

But timing is everything.

And right now, concentrated poverty is resurfacing in the U.S., reversing the fortunes of many cities and neighborhoods that saw steep declines a decade ago, according to a disturbing study released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institute.

In the first half of this decade, the study found, the number of low-wage workers and families living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods "rose by a striking 41 percent."

The report caught my eye because, a scant five years ago, another Brookings-commissioned study gave me faint hope that we were beginning to turn the corner on poverty.

That 2003 study – based on 1999 federal income tax filings – was optimistically titled: "Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems: the Dramatic Decline of Concentrated Poverty in the 1990s."

It found that the number of folks living in high-poverty neighborhoods fell 24 percent nationwide during the '90s, reversing a steep rise in urban poverty from 1970 to 1990. A high-poverty neighborhood is defined as one in which at least 40 percent of the population qualifies for the federal earned income tax credit, or EITC. For a married couple with two kids, the poverty threshold was $19,806 in 2005. The EITC income limit for a family of four was $37,263.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area held its own in that study, with the number of people living in very poor neighborhoods dropping by 45 percent in the '90s.

But the new study – based on 2005 statistics – paints a dramatically different picture. The title alone points up how much ground we've lost in recent years: "Reversal of Fortune: A New Look at Concentrated Poverty in the 2000s."

So what gives?

"Overall, it's all about the economy," said Alan Berube, a Brookings fellow and co-author of the new study. "For those who thought we may have solved the problem of concentrated poverty, the message is, we haven't done that."

That observation hardly surprises those on the front lines of our nation's ill-fated war against poverty.

"Not at all," said Larry James, president and CEO of the faith-based Central Dallas Ministries, which provides a network of hunger relief, health care, housing, legal service, employment training and educational programs. "They're eating us alive in the neighborhoods right now."

The situation in North Texas isn't as bleak as it is in sections of the Midwest and Northeast, where older, industrial cities saw double-digit spikes in concentrated poverty.

Of the 58 large metro areas studied, 34 saw increased rates of concentrated poverty between 1999 and 2005, and 24 showed a decline.

As the study points out, many factors influence how poverty concentrates in a particular area over time, "including changing population and economic dynamics."

The Dallas-Fort Worth area saw a 2.3 percent increase in concentrated poverty.

"In Dallas, we've got about 95 percent of the kids in [public] schools on free or reduced lunch programs," Mr. James said. "It's clear to me that the number of people in economic distress is increasing rapidly."

There are no panaceas. But are there any solutions?

"Robust economic growth, together with smart policies that help reduce economic segregation, remain critical for helping low-income people and places," Mr. Berube said.

Mr. James put it more bluntly. "We've got to rise above the partisan political battles and come to grips with quality-of-life issues that affect us all."

If not, the title on the next study won't be encouraging, either. It may get worse.